roam if we want to.

tomorrow marks the start of my third venture back to italy and, in all honesty, 

there are simply no words.

i booked the trip without telling a soul what i was doing and it was beyond excitinggg. for the first time in my life it was me, my debit card and any location in the world...

well, mostly :)

perhaps, i should explain how all of this came to be.

i spent the second semester of my junior in high school in italy as an exchange student. the experience was one million percent GLORIOUS but the greatest thing i came away with was a strong bond with my italian host family. particularly with my host sister, valentina, who is exactly 366 days younger than me.

my first weekend in isernia (my lovely little "host town" in the molise region of southern italy) valentina took me to the 18th birthday party of a friend of hers. while we were at the party we made tentative plans about how, "of course i would be there for valentina's 18th birthday"! after that night, vale's 18th birthday party was something that wasn't often discussed (since this was early 2006 and she had not even turned 16 yet) but something i just assumed that i would be able to be there for.

i graduated from high school in the spring of 2007 and, from a single and childless dear friend of my dad's, received a more than generous check. i called him as soon as i received it. while he was more than happy to have been able to have given it to me, he made it clear that he only wanted a small portion of it to go towards my schooling.

i was instructed to spend the rest "on a trip". 

i began my freshman year at BIOLA University that fall and before too long came to find that we would have a six-week long christmas holiday. my immediate reaction was that i would spend christmas in the states with my family and then leave the country shortly thereafter to spend the remaining several weeks of my holiday in italy with my host family.

my parents, for whatever reason, were opposed to this idea and convinced me to stay in california and take a class instead.

by the time christmas holiday rolled around the reality of me not being able to see my host family and my town and the things that were once so familiar to me combined with the fact that not only would i not be able to be there for valentina's 18th birthday (which is in march) but i wouldn't even be able to see her that year, became more than i wanted to bear. 

with that (and the help of my sweet graduation check/STA's low air-fares) i booked a roundtrip flight from lax to rome for $800.

today, is february 27th and it is 2:07 am. my flight back to italy is in 12 hours and saturday night is valentina's 18th birthday party. 

for now, i am too physically tired to feel excited but i know that come tomorrow and the fact that there is absolutely nothing standing between me and my beloved reunion with the country i so dearly love, i will not be able to keep my feet on the ground. 

and, 24 hours from right now,  italy will be mine once again.

pace e amore.